Low Tide

Geared up around 4 am and paddled to the Harbor/GG Bustop...43 came along at 4:28...43 only goes as far as 19th Street in Costa Mesa, and I thought to get off there and walk to the Back Bay, or to the Beach...3-4 mile walks...I didn't want to sit the long while waiting for 71 at the Triangle like yesterday...but a Mexican Fisherman with his gear in one of those rolling shopping carts came aboard, and I thought, 'he may know how to get to the Piers'...and he did, and that's 47, a transfer at...well I've forgotten, but it's in my guidebook...Victoria!...that was it...or near there...and a good route as it goes right to Newport Pier, and passes near the River at Placentia Street...I can hop off there on a ride, and walk to the River...Fisherman and myself were the first ones at the Pier...and I was much taken with how far the Tide was out!!!...something to do for sure with the Moon being at its closest to the Earth...North of the Pier are Breakwaters to keep back sand erosion, and I paddled over to tide pool...lots of Pachys!!! (striped shore crabs)...a curious Starfish that seemed to be feeding upside down with its long arms...large Turret Shells were doing same it seemed...tiny shells on anemones pic up...it was still dark while I was at the Rocks pretty much...not very good pics...I find tide pools difficult to photograph too!...back at the Pier's End there must have been a Mackerel run..and another group of Vietnamese...they have a real style to how they fish and clean fish and so on...some of their wives come along and manage the buckets and cleaning...cloudy overcast cool...on return took 47 ro 43 without any waits, and back to House around 9:30...riding on the Bus is a bit like sitting in a pue at church...one contemplates while confronted with backs of heads!...but much fun to people watch, and the passing scenes outside the windows....

Flat Fish

Halibut, I think... I bought a 30 Day Buss Pass for twentytwofifty, senior discount!, and it's been sitting, but tried it out this morning, and tried to get to the Ocean and Balboa Pier...geared up around 5 am, got to the end of the Pier around 7:30 am!...hmmph....long wait for connection between 43 and 71...pass is good all day for all transfers..everyone seems to have one...end of Pier was occupied by serious Vietnamese fishermen...mixed group along the Length...Ruby's Restaurant is on the End, and I had pancakes and watched...Smelt, I think they were catching, infrequently!...sat outside at Table with Coffee, camera at the ready...thought to get Smelt pic, but Flatfish came up on the line!...pretty fish, and I like the pic!...I have one other 'fisherman's hands holding catch'...the crab catcher on the Pier in Crescent City...don't know but these two favorite fish pics might be the start of a motif for me in a populated genre--fishermen holding fish!...I have fishing gear, and have fished, but the last Trout I caught at May Lake seemed a bit cruel...which brings me to the Deerslayer!...and James Fenimore Cooper...towards the end of the story there's an almost comic relief scene where the Deerslayer and Chingachgook have a shooting contest to test the worth of a coveted rifle called Killdeer...they shoot Ducks, then Deerslayer shoots an Eagle hoovering high overhead...from the description it sounds like Osprey...he's quite pleased at his success, having bested his friend, as he does apparently anyone in a shooting contest, but then his plight comes over him...he's about to be the 'sport' of the Hurons...and he laments having killed the Eagle for sport, and wishes he might find the Eaglets in their nest so as to put them out of their misery to come, being without parent...gosh this is a convoluted book!!!...I have no idea how I got through it when I was a kid!...a thought here is that Deerslayer overlooks that both Male and Female take care of Osprey/Eagle Young...anyway, Cooper does a fine job of portraying the Hurons as they have sport with Deerslayer, first tomahawks, then muskets, in circus style--Deerslayer tied to a post, then untied to see if he'd flinch...then during the third course, fire torment, there are some delays, and the troops arrive and put the whole bunch of Hurons to the Bayonet and Musket Ball, fatally wounding the one untangled sort in a tangled scene, Hetty....but during the torture, each Huron brave, and the women and children, are sketched by Cooper with fidelity, and earlier how they were getting along as a foraging party with a penchant for raiding was done well too...how they camp, how they sleep, and what they do on the warpath...myself, I think Deerslayer should have taken up with them, that was the choice Huron Chief Rivenoak gave him, join the Hurons and take care of the family berift of the warrior Deerslayer had killed in combat earlier...rather, Deerslayer stuck to his guns, being White and affiliated with the Delaware, enemies of the Huron, the Delaware Indians having adopted him...if he'd taken the offer, the Hurons would have packed up and left...he was on a quest with Chingachgook to retrieve Chingachgook's fiancé who had been abducted by a Delaware who joined this Huron group as refuge...I suppose this Delaware's action perpetrated the whole mess, mess being the bayonets and musket balls that wipe out the Hurons...there's a wider conflict afoot...the Hurons allied with the French, and the Delaware with the English, this being, I gather, the time of the French Indian War...and it is war without quarter, but  this gracious offer of mercy from Rivenoak is walled off by Deerslayer's scruples...Deerslayer seems to overlook that he is in league with the unscruplus sorts actions that he thought to hang back from earlier...two of his compatriots were intent on scalps...Deerslayer draws the line at scalps!...being White!...oh...White Christian!...apparently Whites that take scalps have fallen from Christian grace...but it's okay to fight alongside such for Deerslayer....well, they're all after scalps, I'd say, the unscrupulous literally, Deerslayer figuratively, Deerslayer being content with  intangible tales of his triumphs rather than  the hard proof of a scalp...don't know but Cooper is saying they're all a sorry lot, save for Hetty...the troops finished the Hurons as Deerslayer would have the Eaglets...

quote

"In a 1985 autobiography by the American who was the first pilot to break the sound barrier, the author described how, while serving in the US armed forces during World War II in the autumn of 1944, his fighter group was attacking Germany and '...assigned an area fifty miles by fifty miles and ordered to strafe anything that moved...We weren't asked how we felt zapping people. It was a miserable, dirty mission, but we all took off on time and did it ... We were ordered to commit an atrocity, pure and simple, but the brass who approved this action probably felt justified because wartime Germany wasn't easily divided between "innocent civilians" and its military machine. The farmer tilling his potato field might have been feeding German troops.'"

https://www.facebook.com/TribalTheocrat/posts/530773553678887

unquote

That quote is in a lot of places, and Yeager too says "there's no morals in war"...Yeager is the real deal Hawkeye!

cloudy cool...the air is so foul from autos' and trucks' and busses' exhaust in Town, while sitting at Bus Stops, I'd just as soon not inhale!

Where the Cement River Begins

Geared up, and rolled out around 5:30 am, and Silver fine as far as I went before, but when I reached the section that diverted me last roll, the true test I anticipated, as at this section the freeway cement is like washboarded from not being layed right, or something, there was a traffic jam, so, so, diverted to surface streets and a Denny's off 91 near Madison and Magnolia...breakfast, and studied the maps, iphone google maps too...rolled along Magnolia and somehow to Main and to Riverside, and found myself crossing the River on Riverside..pulled over for pics...second two up...and was delighted to see the Bike Trail goes this far... I think it goes all the way to Redlands, and a bit further!...found direction signs to 10 and Big Bear and Running Springs...rolled up 18 to the Lake...Boulder Bay pic...sat awhile there, taking pics, Bees on Spanish Roses in the Little Park, and Birds about...Robins, Starlings, Mallards....continued through Town, layout I remember, and looked for the road that goes around to near San Gorgonio Mountain, which is the watershed start of the River..this road is 38...all the while hereabout I reflected on how smaller the Pines are than in my fond memories of Hikes and Ski Trips!...this of course being that Pines in the San Beranrdinos are growing in a much drier envoironemnt than the Merced's Watershed, and I was comparing them with the Valley's!...rolling along 38, I sighted the sign for the Santa Ana River Trail (hiking!), pic up, and rolled down the Dirt Road thereabout to looksee...expected a campground, but aside the road just a lot of boarded up vacation homes...and found the trail head sign..pic up...pics of the Creek, and Primrose, and I continued on the Dirt Road aways, but turned back, not sure where it went...back on 38, I diverted to Jenks Lake, and made that loop, and I'm thinking maybe the Ranger Visitor Cabin was on the section of 38 I didn't travel...early on I passed one Ranger Cabin, but too early to be open.... I expected, and wanted, to find one, and find out about camping and trail permits and such...there there somewhere!...anyway, fee required at Jenks Lake, passed, and Adventure Pass required to park, anywhere, and I'd forgotten to bring that, so, so, kept rolling until 38 descended to the wide wash of another branch of the River...I'm not sure how many there are...Bear Paw Audubon Preserve thereabout...pic...and continued to Redlands...and success, as I now have a picture in my mind where to go to explore the beginning sections of the River!....had thought to continue towards Palm Spring and take 74 to Idyllwild, but enough, and back on 10 to 91, and the dreaded section...bumpitybumpitybumpity...and Silver did fine!...no DW at all!...so new tires and alignment did the trick...much pleased!...sunny blue hot, hotter on the lowlands...I got back at 12:30 pm...and went to the GG Library...tried to get a bargain copy of Tom Sawyer...I just finished reading the Deerslayer...post in the works...and I'm sorta mining an idea, the next 'ore' Mark Twain's Mississippi...for sometime, Glimmerglass and the Mississippi...'Mississippi' is maybe the best word ever!!!

Neonicotinoids

quote
A 2013 peer reviewed literature review concluded that neonicotinoids in the amounts that they are typically used harm bees and that safer alternatives are urgently needed.^[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neonicotinoid
quote

quote
De Kroon added: “All the other studies [on harm caused by neonicotinoids] build up from toxicology studies. But we approached this completely from the other end. We started with the bird population data and tried to explain the declines. Our study really makes the evidence complete that something is going on here. We can’t go on like this any more. It has to stop.”

Neonicotinoids linked to recent fall in farmland bird numbers

Research demonstrates for the first time the knock-on effects to other species of class of insecticides known to harm bees

Damian Carrington

The Guardian, Wednesday 9 July 2014 13.02 EDT

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jul/09/neonicotinoids-farmland-birds

unquote

 

Got new tires for Silver...and alignment...soon a test drive to see if DW abated...

 

...having now traveled, rolled about for 40,000 miles in Silver, I can give a kinda report of my own "study" of the decline in Insects...my approach has been Silver's Windshield...in my sister's car, on the long roll out and back to Texas, I  took notice too of the Windshield's study...

...just sitting on the front step of the House, I can note the decline, having my own memories of chasing bugs when a kid--there were a lot of bugs!...bees swarmed about fallen fruit, moths about the porch light at night...I tormented grasshoppers and snails endlessly!...and collected butterflies with more care, if not less savagery!

 

pic up, Mocking Bird rising from backyard power/telephone pole to catch Insect...most often, Mocking Bird perches on this favorite pole singing singing allalong day!

GG Cat And Hawk

 Cat was in backyard a couple days back...a bookend to pic a year ago!...Cooper's Hawk on neighbor's roof a couple days back too...I was sitting on the front step, contemplating, and two Hawks flew to the neighbor's Jacaranda...tried for good pic in the Tree...missed...took one shy pic Hawk on roof...shy because one doesn't like to point a telephoto lens willy-nilly in Town!..

...tomorrow will take Silver to shop for new tires and alignment...front tires are wearing uneven, on one the tread is gone on the outside half..maybe that'll fix the DW!

Happy Fourth!

clips

My sister asked me for help with blogger's slideshow gadget.  She's trying to make a group blog for her rock club.  I couldn't figure it out, and I really tried!  I wont list the long searches and details!  But I finally came to realizing that linking as I do with a ulr to my youtube  clips, one could do that...just up load to youtube still pics instead of clips. 

Thinking on all this, I realized I've never researched out how to embed videos in posts, I know it can be done...see it all the time on facebook.  So I googled and found explanation of how youtube does it...find one of your clips, find the "embed" menu under share, and from the box with highlighted ulr, copy that, as one will paste that into blog page...

now, the menu asked me something about "start with current video", and I wasn't sure what that meant!...it means all my clips will play, starting with the one I selected...sheesh...but you know, I always thought it would be nice to have a big lcd on the wall playing my clips...expensive I know...one would need to dedicate a computer and have it always linked with the embed clip and open to blogger...but it is very possible...the lcdtv/computer online open to blogger open to embedded link to clips on youtube....that's a bit much to ponder!!!

One could just have the clips or slide shows on your computer, but with the embed youtube feature, one could embed anyone's playlist!  sheesh!...at any rate, here on this page, is all my clips, which is a feature I always wanted...they are all rough drafts...I need a really fast and stay cool computer to work with video, and expensive for speed and memory, and for sometime DavidDavid's Tree in the Door MovieMovie Production!!